Talk:Moun Sangeet (मौन संगीत)

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First Approach, obsolete and unclear

(left for entertainment value only)

It actually does seem fairly clear that the original language of these letters is Hindi if one looks via G**gle's peek inside the book. They are addressed to "the usual gang" of letter recipients in the early days of sannyas: Sw Krishna Saraswati, Sw Yoga Chinmaya, "Sadhana" (most likely Ma Amrit Sadhana), Sw Krishna Kabeer, etc. He would mostly be writing to these people in Hindi. Okay?

But not so fast, because then . . . we have letters addressed to "Mukta", which may well be Ma Yoga Mukta, to whom he would surely be writing in English. And then we have lots of pages which aren't even letters. So the jury is out.

This all got started because Shailendra, who suggested Moun Sangeet, says it is a translation. So we'll leave the issue unclear for now. doofus-9 05:50, 15 January 2017 (UTC)


Above wrong ideas were written when the TOC was not part of what G**gle Books was allowing to be viewed. Today, a different peek has been allowed, and the whole TOC is available and what it indicates, though it is admittedly just the menu, is something completely different. What we appear to have, according to the TOC, are the translations of six (6) books of English letters from the early 70s. The full count is there too, except there are only 44 titles for What Is Meditation? instead of 45. That would make 199 in all, and perhaps the missing one is only missing in the menu but actually there.

How this connects with the previous impression is a bit of a mystery. Some details: "Mukta" is indeed Ma Yoga Mukta, who had the whole of Turning In written to her, and the second letter, detailed at Turning In (letters), does indeed have the same title here. And "Sadhana" is not Amrit but Ma Anand Sadhana, who did indeed receive some letters from Osho in English in those days. Sw Krishna Saraswati, Sw Yoga Chinmaya and Sw Krishna Kabeer are still mysteries. Perhaps they entered via The Twilight Zone. Or perhaps their letters were in English.

FWIW, today's view shows these same extra characters, plus a few more which "sound" Indian in the first collection, which is explicitly stated to be a translation from The Silent Music, but all these same folks were still showing up there. The "pages which aren't even letters" are possibly the second pages of some long letters which have gotten chopped up by the G**gle peek process, so they are missing their introduction, etc.

Anyway, in the face of all the correlation with the English letters books, it would seem churlish to deny that a translation is what it is. -- doofus-9 04:57, 9 February 2017 (UTC)

Well, yeah, right

So having got the above mental meanderings based on partial information out of the way, a few notes:

The scans received from Shailendra in Aug 2017 show clearly that the book is a translation based on the stated original collections of English letters. And it's all here, except possibly the above mentioned 44 titles in the TOC for What Is Meditation? where there should be 45. All fairly straightforward ...

What's left are the few details of the previously noted "edition" of "2015". The page count has been left from that edition, as has its ISBN-13. The latter is precisely the equivalent of the ISBN-10 in the 2013 pub-info page, and there is otherwise no page count info for the 2013 edition.

About the date, it seems to be Diamond's recent practice to sticker in a date after "संस्करण", or "edition", with no apparent changes in content; thus this serves, when there is anything there, as a pub date, without saying anything about "edition". More of a reprint than anything, and so we can say that the "2015 edition" was also a reprint. Or so it seems here at this moment.

Oh, and about the title and transliteration ... This word मौन "should" be transliterated as maun, since the diacritic ौ is near always represented as "au", and the vowel combination "ou" has no corresponding vowel in Devanagari. This word मौन appears to be a rare exception to all this, and has been done as moun since before Roman transliteration was standardized. Search engines have no trouble with it, so so be it. -- doofus-9 05:33, 1 September 2017 (UTC)


doofus, you say "i.e. the whole original English contingent in A Cup of Tea". But where is Flowers of Love in this? --Sugit (talk) 09:33, 23 March 2018 (UTC)


It looks like there is an unfortunate ambiguity in what i wrote, which was intended to refer to the letters' original languages. In that way, Flowers of Love is not in the "original English contingent", as its original language is Hindi. It certainly IS in the original edition of A Cup of Tea, the whole of which is English. The perils of compact writing! Will rephrase. -- doofus-9 16:40, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Check of sources

letter पूर्व-जन्मों के बंद तालों का खुलना on p.157 is translation of The Gateless Gate ~ 21.--DhyanAntar 08:43, 17 February 2021 (UTC)